I've been each girls' mother for a birthday now. Kate turned 2 last March just two days after the trial to terminate parental rights. (What is it like to lose your child before she's even two years old? If you last see your child at one-and-a-half, do you even really know who she is?) Jane turned 4 in September, as we are maybe only a month away from finalizing the adoption.
The span of their birthdays is also pretty much the span of their adoption process. So much in such little time.
Jane did not talk about her birth mother today. She didn't even ask.
Theo set up a special email account for us to use when contacting birth family. I got a message from the girls' maternal grandfather yesterday explaining he didn't come to her birthday party because it wasn't good for him, "...to be around [the father's] side of the family." Like he couldn't trust himself not to start a fight. He has custody of C, the half-brother whom I had to un-invite after the girls cried when I mentioned he'd be coming and told me stories of him hurting them.
A few months ago grandfather began pestering me for pictures of the girls. I'd send one or two each time. There was no reply to the email with Jane's birthday party info. Then, when I sent the un-inviting email I got a message saying he couldn't read my message because it didn't "all come through".
Huh. So, big files like pictures came through just fine but a simple email did not? I'm a little doubtful.
But meanwhile also really okay with him confirming that he isn't someone who needs to be in their lives. He lies when communicating with me? And reveals he can't be around others without starting a fight? Okay, then, thanks for so clearly crossing yourself off our list. Don't need any of that drama.
The criteria we keep using when evaluating whether people should stay in their lives is: do they have something to give? Can they put good things into the girls' lives?
We are still trying to connect with maternal grandmother. We've never been given a phone number but I hunted down her email address and sent multiple emails inviting her to the party. No response. She did come to Kate's 2nd birthday party and absolutely wept over the girls. Others read that display as crocodile tears--where was she all the times her daughter had endangered their lives in the past? I read it then, and now I'm even more sure, as a final good-bye.
I made overtures to exchange contact info at that party and said we were committed to staying in touch. She didn't respond and I thought maybe she didn't believe me. Now I think she knew she wasn't going to be a part of the girls' future.
I think she said good-bye and she meant it. There could be many reasons:
a) either she feels adoption is final and they're better off permanently away from her family, or
b) she cannot herself handle the grief of only partially seeing them, or
c) she cannot keep her contact a secret from her daughter and doesn't want to be in the middle of us and her daughter.
I am told that she placed her fourth child for adoption at birth. That she already had three and was struggling to parent them. So I imagine she already has strong views on what adoption means.
For whatever the reason, over the past 10 months the family has really whittled down to one flawed, but semi-reliable, person: paternal grandma. I guess I shouldn't be surprised that if, after all, the girls never went to kin but were available for adoption, it's because all those people claiming to love and miss them at the beginning weren't capable of standing by them for the long haul.
Those are hard words to write. I am grieved for what this will mean to the girls as they grow older and more fully understand their situation. What will it mean to have had not one grandparent, aunt, or uncle capable or willing to take you in when you were at your most vulnerable?
And I wonder about the other mother. Does she even know today is Jane's birthday? At the court on the day of the trial they kept reading the wrong date for Kate's birthday. The very first time they read it wrong I recognized the error. Birth mother never caught the error though it was read aloud many times. Sitting in that courtroom I realized who actually was focused on the children and who was not.
So, today, is she focused on Jane? Does she even feel what she lost?
Do I need to know, somehow, that that other mother has emotionally given up her role as mother before I can step into that role free and clear? What will I do when that moment never comes because this isn't that kind of adoption? Is the absolute abdication of duty by both the mother's parents a sign that I'm looking for? That none of them ever really cared enough from the beginning? That they can easily give up this role now because they never really filled it to begin with?
I'm not really comfortable in the role of rescuer. It's too fraught with adoption horror stories where the rescuer was actually abductor, whether they knew it or not.
Maybe I keep circling back to birth family to assuage my guilt and assure myself I'm not an abductor. Maybe I should recognize it's too much to ask people of such fragility to rise above their own grief and see to my needs by giving me the blessing I seek.
The span of their birthdays is also pretty much the span of their adoption process. So much in such little time.
Jane did not talk about her birth mother today. She didn't even ask.
Theo set up a special email account for us to use when contacting birth family. I got a message from the girls' maternal grandfather yesterday explaining he didn't come to her birthday party because it wasn't good for him, "...to be around [the father's] side of the family." Like he couldn't trust himself not to start a fight. He has custody of C, the half-brother whom I had to un-invite after the girls cried when I mentioned he'd be coming and told me stories of him hurting them.
A few months ago grandfather began pestering me for pictures of the girls. I'd send one or two each time. There was no reply to the email with Jane's birthday party info. Then, when I sent the un-inviting email I got a message saying he couldn't read my message because it didn't "all come through".
Huh. So, big files like pictures came through just fine but a simple email did not? I'm a little doubtful.
But meanwhile also really okay with him confirming that he isn't someone who needs to be in their lives. He lies when communicating with me? And reveals he can't be around others without starting a fight? Okay, then, thanks for so clearly crossing yourself off our list. Don't need any of that drama.
The criteria we keep using when evaluating whether people should stay in their lives is: do they have something to give? Can they put good things into the girls' lives?
We are still trying to connect with maternal grandmother. We've never been given a phone number but I hunted down her email address and sent multiple emails inviting her to the party. No response. She did come to Kate's 2nd birthday party and absolutely wept over the girls. Others read that display as crocodile tears--where was she all the times her daughter had endangered their lives in the past? I read it then, and now I'm even more sure, as a final good-bye.
I made overtures to exchange contact info at that party and said we were committed to staying in touch. She didn't respond and I thought maybe she didn't believe me. Now I think she knew she wasn't going to be a part of the girls' future.
I think she said good-bye and she meant it. There could be many reasons:
a) either she feels adoption is final and they're better off permanently away from her family, or
b) she cannot herself handle the grief of only partially seeing them, or
c) she cannot keep her contact a secret from her daughter and doesn't want to be in the middle of us and her daughter.
I am told that she placed her fourth child for adoption at birth. That she already had three and was struggling to parent them. So I imagine she already has strong views on what adoption means.
For whatever the reason, over the past 10 months the family has really whittled down to one flawed, but semi-reliable, person: paternal grandma. I guess I shouldn't be surprised that if, after all, the girls never went to kin but were available for adoption, it's because all those people claiming to love and miss them at the beginning weren't capable of standing by them for the long haul.
Those are hard words to write. I am grieved for what this will mean to the girls as they grow older and more fully understand their situation. What will it mean to have had not one grandparent, aunt, or uncle capable or willing to take you in when you were at your most vulnerable?
And I wonder about the other mother. Does she even know today is Jane's birthday? At the court on the day of the trial they kept reading the wrong date for Kate's birthday. The very first time they read it wrong I recognized the error. Birth mother never caught the error though it was read aloud many times. Sitting in that courtroom I realized who actually was focused on the children and who was not.
So, today, is she focused on Jane? Does she even feel what she lost?
Do I need to know, somehow, that that other mother has emotionally given up her role as mother before I can step into that role free and clear? What will I do when that moment never comes because this isn't that kind of adoption? Is the absolute abdication of duty by both the mother's parents a sign that I'm looking for? That none of them ever really cared enough from the beginning? That they can easily give up this role now because they never really filled it to begin with?
I'm not really comfortable in the role of rescuer. It's too fraught with adoption horror stories where the rescuer was actually abductor, whether they knew it or not.
Maybe I keep circling back to birth family to assuage my guilt and assure myself I'm not an abductor. Maybe I should recognize it's too much to ask people of such fragility to rise above their own grief and see to my needs by giving me the blessing I seek.
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